--- schema_version: "1.0.0" id: "the-faith-that-holds:en:chapter-10" work_id: "urn:systemstheology:book:the-faith-that-holds:chapter:chapter-10" book_id: "the-faith-that-holds" chapter_id: "unit-8-who-is-jesus-christ" chapter_slug: "chapter-10" title: "Unit 8: Who Is Jesus Christ?" book_title: "The Faith That Holds" language: "en" source_language: "en" translation_status: "source" authors: ["Systems Theology"] editorial_owner: "Systems Theology" editors: [] review_status: "not_specified" reviewers: [] content_version: "content-883d56151ea3" content_hash_sha256: "883d56151ea399343c99fa5613124a90025530e61e8149be55738cbb0e43ad25" published_at: "2026-07-15T21:14:45.000Z" modified_at: "2026-07-15T23:50:19.254Z" canonical_url: "https://systemstheology.com/library/the-faith-that-holds/chapter-10/" markdown_url: "https://systemstheology.com/research/books/the-faith-that-holds/en/chapter-10.md" license: "All rights reserved; research use subject to the Use Policy" license_url: "https://systemstheology.com/use-policy/" correction_url: "https://systemstheology.com/library/the-faith-that-holds/chapter-10/#chapter-comments" --- # Unit 8: Who Is Jesus Christ? Question: Who is Jesus Christ? Answer: Jesus Christ is the eternal Son made flesh, Israel's Messiah, crucified Savior, risen Lord, and center of all things. ## Read - John 1:14 (NIV): the Word became flesh. - Matthew 16:16 (NIV): Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God. - Colossians 1:15--20 (NIV): Christ is the image of the invisible God and the one in whom all things hold together. - Hebrews 1:1--4 (NIV): God speaks finally in the Son. - 1 Corinthians 15:3--8 (NIV): Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared. ## What the Answer Means Christian faith stands or falls with Jesus. He is more than a teacher with better morals, more than a prophet who points beyond himself, and more than an example of courage, love, or spiritual wisdom. He is the Word who was with God and was God, the Son who became flesh, the image of the invisible God, the one in whom all things hold together. Jesus is fully God and fully human. That is not a puzzle for experts only. It is the heart of salvation. If Jesus is not truly God, then God has not come to save us. If Jesus is not truly human, then our humanity has not been healed from the inside. The gospel says both: the Son of God became one of us without ceasing to be God. His humanity is complete. The eternal Son assumed a human body, rational soul, mind, affections, and human will; divinity did not replace a missing human faculty. Yet Jesus is not two personal subjects living beside each other. The one Son truly lives and acts in both his divine and human natures, healing the whole humanity he assumed. Jesus also comes as Israel's Messiah. He fulfills promise, law, wisdom, prophecy, temple, priesthood, king, sacrifice, and hope. He does not appear from nowhere with a private spirituality. He comes inside the story God has been telling from the beginning. Jesus is the true image of God. In him we see what God is like and what human life is meant to become. He receives everything from the Father. He lives by the Spirit. He tells the truth. He touches the unclean. He welcomes sinners without blessing sin. He confronts hypocrisy. He eats with the rejected. He suffers without deceit. He gives himself in love. He forgives enemies. He rises bodily from the dead. Jesus is not one religious piece inside a larger story we control. He is the center. Creation is through him and for him. Scripture bears witness to him. The Church belongs to him. The Spirit glorifies him. Human life is restored in him. The future is his kingdom. To confess Jesus as Lord is more than admiring him. It is to receive his judgment over every rival lord: self, tribe, nation, money, fear, pleasure, reputation, ideology, family, church brand, and spiritual power. Jesus does not fit inside our preferred reality. He tells us what reality is. ## Jesus Is Not Our Projection Every age is tempted to make Jesus look like what it already loves. One age wants a Jesus who blesses power. Another wants a Jesus who never judges. One group wants him to support its politics. Another wants him to stay private and harmless. One person wants comfort without obedience. Another wants commands without mercy. One church wants Jesus to defend its image. Another wants Jesus to excuse its anger. The real Jesus is better and more searching than every projection. He is gentle with the weak and severe with hypocrisy. He welcomes sinners and calls them to repentance. He blesses the poor and warns the rich. He touches bodies and forgives sins. He eats with outsiders and forms a holy people. He refuses violent grasping and still speaks with authority. He is not managed by the expectations of family, disciples, crowds, rulers, or enemies. So the Church keeps returning to the Gospels, the apostles' witness, and the whole Scripture fulfilled in him. We do not get to invent the Christ we prefer. We receive the Christ who comes. ## Meeting Jesus in the Gospels Many people know ideas about Jesus before they have spent much time with Jesus in the Gospels. They know that he is loving. They know that he died for sins. They know that he rose. They may know songs, creeds, sermons, verses, and church language. Those are good gifts when they are true. But the Gospels do something no summary can replace. They let us watch him. We see him resting beside a well, speaking with a woman others would avoid. We see him touched by desperate people. We see him asleep in a storm and then commanding the wind. We see him eating with tax collectors, blessing children, answering traps, telling stories, weeping at a tomb, washing feet, looking at a rich young man with love, and warning religious leaders whose holiness had become hard and false. That kind of seeing matters for ordinary faith. Some of us carry a Jesus made mostly from church tone. If the church was harsh, Jesus may feel harsh. If the church was vague, Jesus may feel vague. If the church was sentimental, Jesus may feel sentimental. If the church was performative, Jesus may feel like the one watching to see whether we are impressive enough. The Gospels correct those borrowed pictures. In Mark's Gospel, Aaron met a Jesus who would not stay inside Aaron's favorite picture of him. He wanted Jesus to be calm in the way he wished he were calm: never interrupted, never pulled on by needy people, never angry, never needing rest, never surrounded by confusion. Then he read Mark and found crowds pressing, friends misunderstanding, demons shrieking, religious leaders testing, storms rising, and Jesus moving through all of it with authority that did not look like distance. One night he stopped at the story where Jesus looked at a rich man and loved him before giving him a command that made him sad. Aaron had wanted love to mean removing the hard word. The Gospel gave him a Jesus whose love could look straight at an idol and name it. The next morning Aaron apologized to his daughter for using softness as a way to avoid truth. "I called it patience," he said, "but sometimes I was just afraid you would be upset with me. Jesus loves better than that." She did not let him turn the apology into a speech. She asked, "Does that mean you will stop saying maybe later when you already know the answer is no?" Aaron smiled because the question had found him. "Yes. That is part of it." The real Jesus corrects both our harshness and our avoidance. So the Church keeps returning to the Gospels. Read slowly enough to meet the real person in the text. Pay attention to who is comfortable around Jesus and who is not, who he touches, when he asks questions, when he refuses to answer, when he withdraws to pray, and when he names hypocrisy. Watch how often people misunderstand him, and notice that he does not panic when others are confused. The Gospels also help when faith feels abstract. If your body needs rest, watch Jesus sleep in the boat. If you are ashamed, watch him eat with sinners. If you are grieving, watch him at Lazarus's tomb. If you are afraid of power, watch him before Pilate. If you think holiness means distance from needy people, watch him touch lepers. If you think love means avoiding hard truth, listen to him speak plainly to the people he loves. This is not imagination replacing Scripture. It is attention to Scripture. The Church learns Christ by receiving the apostolic witness, not by inventing a mood about him. A simple practice can help. Read one Gospel scene and ask three questions: - What does Jesus do? - What does Jesus say? - What does this show me about God, human beings, sin, mercy, and the life Jesus is restoring? Then let the scene speak to your actual life. Stay with the Lord standing in front of you in the text before rushing to a lesson. The Gospels do not give us a religious mood. They teach us to know the Christ who holds us. ## Practice Name one place where Jesus corrects your preferred image of him. Start by asking a more concrete question like this: - Do I prefer Jesus as teacher but resist him as Lord? - Do I prefer Jesus as comforter but resist him as judge? - Do I prefer Jesus as example but resist him as Savior? - Do I prefer Jesus as private inspiration but resist his Church, cross, or kingdom? Then let those words become a small prayer before God: > Lord Jesus Christ, correct my false pictures of you and teach me to follow you as you truly are. ## Questions for Conversation - Which false picture of Jesus is easiest for people around you to believe? - Why does it matter that Jesus is truly God and truly human? - What rival lord does Jesus confront most directly in your life right now? Watch for this. Every age remakes Jesus in the image it already admires. He is more than an activist, therapist, coach, revolutionary, mystic, moral example, or mascot. Jesus is Lord, and he judges our age too.